Synopses & Reviews
Dorothea Hilhorst provides for the first time an empirically rooted and theoretically innovative understanding of the actual internal workings, organizational practices, and discursive repertoires of NGOs. Her evidence and insights lead to a different picture of NGOs from the one prevailing in the literature. Her model of NGOs--not as clear-cut organizations, but often with several different faces, fragmented, and consisting of social networks whose organizing practices remain in flux--is helpful to understanding not just these bodies, but official development agencies too.
Review
"This highly original study is the first time that such a detailed analysis of the everyday practices and social dynamics of an internationally oriented NGO has been achieved." -- Norman Long, Wageningen University
"A coherent and compelling alternative approach to the study of development policies and practices [which] deserves a readership well beyond development studies." -- Gerd Baumann, University of Amsterdam
Synopsis
Against an international context where NGOs are still seen, in contrast to many official development agencies, as the saviours and sources of hope for an otherwise disappointing development process, Dorothea Hilhorst provides for the first time an empirically rooted and theoretically innovative understanding of the everyday politics, actual internal workings, organizational practices and discursive repertoires of this kind of organization.
Her evidence and insights lead to a different picture of NGOs from the one prevailing in the literature.
Hilhorst develops a model of NGOs not as clearcut organizations, but often with several different faces, fragmented, and consisting of social networks whose organizing practices remain in flux, is helpful to understanding not just these bodies, but official development agencies too.
Synopsis
This book pioneers a new theoretical model for understanding organizational cultures in general, and development organizations in civil society in particular.
Synopsis
Dorothea Hilhorst provides for the first time an empirically rooted and theoretically innovative understanding of the actual internal workings, organizational practices, and discursive repertoires of NGOs. Her evidence and insights lead to a different picture of NGOs from the one prevailing in the literature. Her model of NGOs--not as clear-cut organizations, but often with several different faces, fragmented, and consisting of social networks whose organizing practices remain in flux--is helpful to understanding not just these bodies, but official development agencies too.
About the Author
Dorothea Hilhorst is Lecture, Centre for Rural Development, Waginingen Agricultural University, The Netherlands.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: The Politics of NGO-ing
2. Damning the Dams: Social Movements and NGOs
3. The Power of Discourse: NGOs, Gender and National Democratic Politics
4. Village Experts and Development Discourse: Progress in a Philippine Igorot Village
5. Modelling Development: NGO Room for Manoeuvre
6. Whose Reality Counts: Issues of NGO Accountability
7. Making Sense of NGOs: in Everyday Office Life
8. NGO Leaders: A Social Analysis of Fairly Unusual Human Beings
9. Funding Agencies and NGOs: Peeping Behind Paper Realities
10. Conclusion: NGO Everyday Politics
11. Epilogue: The Politics of Research